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LETTER: Wick can spend his own money

Rep. Hal Wick from Sioux Falls recently wrote a response to support and defend the spending of nearly $42,000 to attend American Legislative Exchange Council meetings in 2013. He does so by trying to make the claim that ALEC is actually bipartisan because Google presented to ALEC, and has influence over our legislative members.

What Wick fails to mention is that the ALEC board of directors is made up entirely of Republican members. Wick also fails to point out that many corporate organizations, like Coca-Cola and Walmart, have left ALEC because they have lost way. Wick also ignores his own members in South Dakota that call the funding of ALEC travel "troublesome" and "not compatible" with other organizations, like Republican Rep. Craig Tieszen from Rapid City.

He insinuates that freedom-loving South Dakotans would all support that spending of our tax dollars on trips to an organization like ALEC. I love my freedom, Rep. Wick, and I believe that you should be free to spend your own money to attend ALEC meetings. I just don't think that our tax dollars should fund your trips to rub elbows with other Republicans from other states.